Loose of Limits

My favorite part of a dive is when the descent is over, I'm perfectly buoyant and I take my first calm breath 20 meters down and look around at my underwater world for the next hour. For me, there's nothing else like it. Tom's favorite moment is when we're at the surface, excitement and expectation running high for the dive about to come. We look around, regulators in place, making eye contact with our group. "Is everyone ready?" we mentally ask. 'OK' signal is given by all, followed by a down-pointing thumb. And then the real fun begins. From the moment we got our PADI Open Water certification in November, 2010, I've been hooked. At least once a week, I dream about diving, and sometimes I'm even swimming along side whales. Tom had the genius  idea for us to board a dive boat to explore Thailand's Surin and Similan Islands and - no surprise here - it turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life. We booked our trip with Similan Divin...

When we asked one of our Indian friends back in San Francisco about the countries many parks he recommended Ranthambore National Park  in Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan. It's considered one of the best places in the world to view the wild Bengal tiger. At this point there are more Bengal tiger in captivity than exist in the wild. We really wanted to see a tiger but realized even if we didn't it would be nice to see other wildlife and get some fresh air- much needed after the polluted haze of Agra (read here ). We're on safari!

Remember when we had a third roommate in Alleppey ? We loved Barry the lizard. He kept to his corner, he didn't make sudden movements, and he didn't invade any personal or private moments.  Well, as it turns out, we're not open to all extra roommates. When we got to Hampi and checked into our guesthouse (much more on Hampi and the masses of chillum-smoking Israelis at a later time), we noticed that we shared our bathroom with 2 frogs. Really, they looked like bumpy toads and weren't very cute. One was about the size of a golf ball and he lived in the crook of the toilet, and the other was about the size of a tennis ball and hung out in the corner. No thanks.  To make matters worse, they would decide to jump towards you the moment you relaxed on the toilet…meaning you could never really relax. We were both dreading taking a shower. The showers here aren't partitioned off. You just stand in your bathroom, next to the toilet and dump water over yours...

So, we made it to Kovalam in southern India after 33 hours of travelling and are getting settled. We were so bad about posting on the cross country trip due to the heavy socializing that comes with visiting almost every friend and family member we have over a 5 week period. So we'll use the next couple of posts to wrap up that portion of our trip. One of the greatest parts about the road trip was the wildlife we saw on our drive. The first thing we were excited to see was the  Pronghorn  in Bryce National Park. We saw a group of them grazing on the side of the road in Bryce and once we learned more about them realized they are a fascinating animal. It is considered the second fastest land animal in the world, reaching speeds up to 70 miles an hour. It is thought that it evolved this way to help avoid the now extinct North American cheetah. While we didn't see them running it was very cool to learn the history of an animal that I associated with Africa. Pronghorn ...